


the Fall of Ash & Snow

by MagpieinRoseThorns



Series: the Folke of the Forest [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Canon Gay Relationship, Complicated Relationships, Curse Breaking, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Fairies, Fairy Tale Curses, Fantasy, Kings & Queens, M/M, Multi, Mythology - Freeform, Nonbinary Character, Original Character(s), Past Relationship(s), Political Alliances, Polyamory, Queer Character, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:41:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27641558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagpieinRoseThorns/pseuds/MagpieinRoseThorns
Summary: It was, as far as Ashe understood it, not completely necessary for there to be a Winter Bride. It was a superstition, really, started many years ago, a trick, very likely, by the forest folke who lived in the wood, beyond the river. Sending a girl to be a faerie bride, once every 10 years..Ashe had always known her life would be intertwined with that of the faeries, raised to speak for them at a young age. But when Summer never comes and even the folke start to stir, Ashe will go against all she has been taught to uncover the secrets of her past and the direction of her future: a murder, a curse, and a change.
Series: the Folke of the Forest [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021080
Kudos: 1





	the Fall of Ash & Snow

**Author's Note:**

> The story of the Folke of the Forest is told in 3 parts focused around different characters from different Courts with overlapping storylines: the Fall of Ash & Snow, the Rise of Shadow & Storm, and the Dawn of Fire & Ice, with the possibilities for short stories surrounding other characters.

_**Part 1: the Fall of Ash & Snow **Ashe _

* * *

_ Every fairy child may keep  _

_ Two strong ponies and ten sheep;  _

_ All have houses, each his own,  _

_ Built of brick or granite stone;  _

_ They live on cherries, they run wild—  _

_ I'd love to be a Fairy's child. _

**_“I'd Love To Be A Fairy's Child”_ **

**_Robert Graves_ **

**Preface**

It was, as far as Ashe understood it, not completely necessary for there to be a Winter Bride. It was a superstition, really, started many years ago, a trick, very likely, by the forest folke who lived in the wood, beyond the river. Sending a girl to be a faerie bride, once every 10 years.

Only a girl of at least 16, born between the time of frost and thaw, the coldest of months, would be chosen for Winter Bride. They were not rules so much as they were guidelines, worked out in pattern rather than words by village elders. Born with the sight so that they might gaze upon faerie beauty and leave without much reluctance. The family paid and a dowry of silver and gold with the promise of thaw on their heels.

In her youth, Nan had been the speaker for the folke, a title handed down from her uncle before her. On the first of each new month, she would venture to the edge of the forest with rowan berries strung around her neck to discuss trade and travel with the folke. Blessed with true sight from birth and raised with proper warnings to keep her from being led astray, she would bring back medicine and fine cloth that might be made into an equally fine gown to return. The folke did not pass the river’s rushing water, and Nan kept iron nails in her pockets and her stalkings turned inward, never crossing the bridge. 

She raised her son to do the same and, when he married, taught his wife the same. Ashe was still just a babe in a rowan pram when a fever took away Nan’s sight, true and natural, traded for muted colours and shifting shapes. 

Her son had been born without true sight, though this came as little surprise. It wasn't a trait that passed directly such as hair colour or the tone of someone's skin, it was old magic with a life and reasoning of its own.

She continued on as Speaker, listening to honeyed voices and delivering messages, ignoring promises of what they could return to her.  _ One should never take a deal with the folke, for you may never know the payment.  _

When Ashe’s mother disappeared, Nan was there to take her son and granddaughter into her home. She sat in the window and watched the seasons go by, eyes to the East, watching the treeline for any sign of danger. On the first of each month, we would dress in the clothes Ashe’s father saved for church and brush out her long curls. She would take the child’s hand and follow the rope tied from her fence to the river’s bridge, reminding Ashe, all the while, to watch but never speak.  _ Watch dear one, for I can watch no more.  _ Teaching her the ways of a Speaker, politics and etiquette and word games. 

Slowly, in the ways that children do, Ashe began to understand the difference in folke she spoke to month by month, as days grew colder and grassy haired maidens with birdsong voices were replaced by men of bark and ice. Emissaries changing back and forth through the years.  _ They live in seasons like the sun. _

And on her tenth winter, she watched at her Nan’s side as a village girl with raven hair and a holly crown walked over the point we do not cross;  _ Not too close, lest they drag you to their side,  _ and take the hand of a faerie man with leaves in his hair to become a Winter Bride.

A Winter Bride to ensure the return of Spring in the weeks to follow. A promise to return the heat of Summer and all the good that it brings.

Her father had fretted when she turned 16, her sight a warning of the possibility of condemnation. Condemned, he thought, to be a faerie’s bride. But Nan had waved his concerns away, her own deal struck and a silent understanding made the day she had taken her to the river as a child to meet the folke.  _ You were born to be a Speaker.  _

After a year, he fretted no more. Mind completely at ease as he was lowered into the ground atop a bed of marigolds. 

It wasn't unexpected, death happens to everyone, but at the same time, it was. To Ashe, her father had never been someone capable of leaving in such a way. 

He died young. Not the dreadfully young death where people accuse the world of being cruel but the kind where people shook their heads and muttered their condolences. The kind of death that was less cruel and more unfair.

Nan followed not two years after, eyes never closing as she slumped in her window seat, and at the first of the month, there were roses instead of cloth to bring back from the wood. 

The next winter, a golden-haired beauty was crowned and swathed in silk to cross the river. She took the hand of a golden-skinned boy with the horns of a goat, who wiped her tears and provided her with flowers and gold. Another Winter Bride to become a Lady of Summer.

But Summer never came. Nor did Spring. In fact, the cold remained without a hit of thaw.

When the first of the month came, no one waited at the edge of the wood, even as the cold bit her cheeks and the sun dipped low in the sky. As the frost went on and food ran low, people grew ill. And each first of the month they would look to Ashe for medicine that never came. 

After 4 months of new frost, new folke stood at the edge of the wood, not the emissaries Ashe had come to know. True, the girl that had always reminded Ashe of a dragonfly’s wing, stood at the edge of the wood, but before her was someone new, with frost on their sleeves and eyes of clouded white.

They came seeking another Winter Bride, another price to be paid. A bag of medicine at their hip and the promise of that on the way. And it didn’t feel right.  _ Never give more than already agreed. _ And the people agreed.

It wasn’t so much of a sacrifice, they told themselves. Their daughters were starving, some of them ill already and a lady of Summer would never want for anything. No true hardship to give her away to a life of luxury and sun.

But the next month the new folk were back with their deal for a bride. The boy with his frosted eye’s unblinking as he made his request. And again the people agreed.

And again they came. Again they agreed.

And the frost did not leave. And the people continued to die.

Again they came. Again they agreed. 

Again. And again.

For what could they do? Living off of dowries of the daughters they had lost, scrambling for medicine that only the folke could provide. Teaching daughters that they had never thought they would need to teach, not the fairest nor the smartest, but seers all the same, how to be wives to fairie husbands. 

By the first of the next month, Ashe stood waiting, far before the folke were due to arrive; no crown of holly atop her head, but a bag in hand. All of the warnings Nan had ever told her, swam around her head, but so too did the faces of the too young girls who would be the next brides should the frost continue. And so, with a final breath, she crossed the river into the wood.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my NaNoWriMo project for 2020 and the rewrite of my draft from 2019. As I don't tend to write chapters in the event in which they occur, updates will likely be unpredictable but I hope to finish the Fall of Ash and Snow by new years.


End file.
